Last week news broke that Anima, which focused on smart watches, has filed for bankruptcy. The startup operated mostly under one of it’s brands, Kronaby. The startup, which in some regards was not a normal startups, was founded in Malmö by four former Sony Mobile employees. However it was majority owned and financed by the Chinese electronics manufacturer Goertek, which is somewhat different from a normal startup.
Kronaby has been in the news a lot, and had big plans. Being positioned here it drew advantage of the strong mobile skills that are in this region, both for hardware and software. It reached sales of just over SEK 37 million (€ 3.5 million) in 2017, but made an operating loss of close to SEK 127 million (€ 12 million), the latest public available numbers. It had raised at least € 10 million when it was started, in 2015.
“The company is insolvent which is not of a temporary nature and therefore requests that the district court puts the applicant into bankruptcy”,
– writes Animas’ Chairman of the Board Peng Peng and CEO Pål Borge in the bankruptcy application, which was submitted to the Malmö District Court during last Wednesday morning, according to Sydsvenskan. The application also states that the company has about 60 employees. In light of the dire financial situation, the company’s leadership is actively considering the option of initiating a company liquidation UK, aligning it with their strategic approach to tackle the insolvency problem.
CEO Pål said that it was a funding that was planned for december from Goertek that did not go thru as planned. However, he believes there are chances for doing a fresh start.
